Magazine Spring 2024 Zooming In On Life At The Atomic Scale

Westmont’s science professors acquired a new teaching and research tool that offers dramatic insight into our intricate world. The biology, chemistry, engineering and physics departments now use a Hitachi scanning electron microscope (SEM), housed in Winter Hall, to explore the finest details of specimens with stunning magnification and resolution. The SEM focuses a beam of electrons to interact with atoms in the sample to produce an image, uncovering structural information with exceptional clarity.

Ben Carlson, assistant professor of physics, employs the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in his research, but he plans to use the microscope in his classroom as a mini particle accelerator. “It’s not directly related to my research — the energy in the electron beam is millions of times lower than in the LHC beam — but it's a fantastic tool for teaching and doing some research,” he says. “It allows us to see things not normally visible with light.”

Beth Horvath, associate professor of biology, is one of the few researchers working on the taxonomy of gorgonians corals in the eastern North Pacific. She can determine the species by extracting sclerites, small calcitic skeletal bits, from the corals’ soft tissue and examining their sizes, shapes and external surfaces. “When describing new species, it’s essential to not only provide light microscopy images of these sclerites but SEM images as well,” she says. “I’ve relied on an outside source to do SEM work. We hope this instrument allows me and my research students to obtain SEM imagery in a timelier manner and complete journal articles faster.”

Kristi Lazar Cantrell, professor of chemistry, has focused her research on protein aggregation, including alpha-helical and beta-sheet fibril assembly. “The electron microscope will allow my research group to capture images of protein aggregates observed in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s,” she says.

Carlson says he will likely use the microscope to characterize materials, look at gold nanoparticles made by the chemists, and a whole range of things they haven’t discovered. “It's easy to use and flexible, so students have begun working with it, computing the material composition in a calibration sample.”